Kent Messick, chief of NCDA’s agronomic division says that a couple of weather events in the past week has been working to derail what’s heretofore been an outstanding start to the growing season:

“We started out much better than we have the last several years. We had generally good moisture conditions, mild temperatures and many of the crops looked the best they had in several years. As good as June was, July has been the opposite. It remains to be seen how long this weather extreme will last, but it has had an impact so far.”

Storms over the weekend, Friday and Sunday nights have affected some fields in the eastern part of the state:

“We had storms over the weekend, particularly in Nash and Edgecomb county. There was a significant amount of tobacco that was damaged from wind and hail. Many of the stalks and leaves have taken a beating. Part maybe related to the good moisture conditions early in the season and so many of the tobacco plants had less root systems.”

Messick says that unconfirmed reports of up to 800 acres of tobacco were damaged in the Edgecombe/Nash county area.

Jacob Stokes, Area Agronomy Extension agent with Clemson University covering Florence, Williamsburg and Clarendon Counties says that they saw some crop damage in his territory from storms late Sunday afternoon:

"There is some out there due to high winds.”

Stokes goes on to explain that he’s not seen widespread damage:

“A little bit of hail damage and corn blown over in the field. Hopefully most of it will stand back up.”

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